


who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

by dustdancingintheflickerlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben never went dark, F/F, F/M, He is a spy, I am tagging this as Kylo/Rey but Rey hasn't appeared yet, Leia deserves better, M/M, and Luke has vanished, but only Luke knows the truth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustdancingintheflickerlight/pseuds/dustdancingintheflickerlight
Summary: The son of war heroes. Nephew of the last Jedi. Grandson of Darth Vader.Ben Organa Solo doesn't know how to live up to his family's legacy. When rumours of an imminent threat to the New Republic begin to circulate, Ben decides to reach out to the voice in his head and ask - what do you need me to do?Back then, he believed himself strong enough to fight the darkness and bring down the First Order from within.Now, he's struggling. His uncle has cut himself off from the Force, and Ben is alone, growing more desperate by the day.He just wants to go home. But without Skywalker, he has no proof that his intentions were good. If he surrenders to the Resistance now, they will call him a war criminal and his mothers reputation will once again be tarnished.He needs to find his uncle, and he needs to find him fast.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

Amidst the violence and chaos of the battlefield, memories are all he has. 

His father, grinning, patting a battered old ship and saying _Ben, it's time you met my other baby._ His mother, rolling her eyes, but smiling fondly nonetheless. He's not sure how he remembers being introduced to the Falcon; he was, after all, barely a month old. 

_That's the Force for you,_ his Uncle Luke would say, but now is not the time to reopen that particular wound. 

The air is heavy with the stench of blood and death. It's getting harder to remember the true reason he's here. _Can you hear me, Uncle Luke?_ He ignites his lightsaber, and the memory changes. He's six, and the nightmares are getting worse. His mop of black hair is damp with sweat, the bedsheets are a prison, suffocating him, but he's stuck, he can't move and the creature in his mind is telling him to _let the dark in_... and then the room floods with pure light. 

His mother scoops him up with such ease that he feels safer immediately. She's whispering words of comfort in his ear, telling him _don't worry baby, the monsters can't hurt you,_ and Ben can still feel the power of her comfort as he sheds blood for a cause he doesn't believe in. 

Those memories are all he has. It's a miracle Snoke hasn't found that particular mind vault during Kylo's 'training' sessions; a testament to the years he spent at the Academy, learning how to compartmentalise and block. If Snoke found out he still longed for Ben's life, then this would all be for nothing. His mission destroyed and his soul lost, for without his tether to his true life, he will succumb to the darkness. 

Eventually, the battle wanes. It's a decisive victory for the First Order, and yet another failure for Ben. 

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Back on Yavin, training at the Jedi Academy, he was a naive and troubled boy desperate to live up to his family's towering legacy. And yet here he was, years later, actively destroying everything his parents fought for, all because he and Luke Skywalker dreamed up a stupid plan that spiralled out of control from the moment Ben set foot on First Order territory. 

And where was Skywalker now? Hiding, like the coward he always was. 

Ben pushes away that line of thought, and remembers that in this wasteland of evil, he is in charge. "Relieve the prisoners of their weapons and get them onto a ship." 

The orders are barked to nobody in particular. The Stormtroopers jump to attention, and Ben suppresses a pang of guilt as he watches the faceless soldiers scramble to please the formidable Kylo Ren. 

That is who he is now, after all. Kylo Ren, scourge of the galaxy. A monster. A story told to scare children into behaving. 

But he will fight it. For as long as there is light in him, Ben will fight. He will remember his mother's strength and his father's brash confidence in the face of terrible odds. He'll remember the devastation on his mother's face when the Senate found out her true parentage and began to question everything she had worked so hard to achieve. He won't be responsible for putting her in that position again, so he will fight. 

But he's struggling. It's exhausting, all this pretending. He wants to go home, to see his parents and his friends, to help them rectify the damage done by the First Order. 

But he can't go home without Skywalker. 

And Luke Skywalker has vanished.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia had hoped she would never have to lead a rebellion again.

**Resistance Base, Now**

Leia Organa had hoped she would never have to lead a rebellion again. She was not naive enough to think the Empire's reign of terror ended with the death of the Emperor; it was, after all, easier to kill a leader than an entire belief system. A generation had been raised under the Empire's banner, taught from birth that an iron fist was best, and that wouldn't go away overnight. But Leia's skills were best suited in the Senate, negotiating peace treaties and trade agreements, and eventually the days of commanding soldiers from ramshackle secret bases became a distant memory. 

It was with an odd mix of nostalgia and sadness that she found herself once again living in a makeshift tent village, worrying about everything from the lack of rations to the ever-increasing threat of the First Order. She was older now, less able to spend every ounce of energy planning missions, less able to simply skip a night of sleep, but still she did. There was no-one here to tell her to go to bed. She was alone, and the worst part about being alone? She was far too used to it. 

Leia hadn't brought many personal items with her from home when it became clear that a relocation would be necessary. She knew from experience that a base could be compromised and they would have to move quickly, and personal items were a distraction in an evacuation. Yet as she sat alone in her quarters, she thanked the stars that she had had the sense to bring the small wooden box she was currently clinging to like a lifeline. 

It was an Alderaanian custom that she had forgotten about until she became a mother. The boxes served as a keepsake, something for children to fill with memories and carry with them as they grew into their independence. Leia had thought her own lost when Alderaan was destroyed, although in the brutality of watching her home planet burn, she had thought more of her parents than possessions. When her box surfaced in the archives on Birren, a quiet planet on the Inner Rim whose governorship Leia had a distant familial claim to, it should have been a moment of bittersweet memory for her. Instead, it was used by a fellow Senator to betray her trust and reveal to the world Leia's true parentage. 

Sighing, Leia ran her fingers over the engraved lettering: 

**BEN ORGANA SOLO**

It hurt just to read his name. 

Among the contents was a lock of Ben's hair and the first baby tooth he'd lost, but that wasn't what Leia was looking for. Gently, she lifted a wooden photo frame that held a drawing of her son, commissioned by Leia to mark his twelfth birthday. The artist had captured him so perfectly - that moody scowl befitting an almost teenager, shaggy hair he refused to cut, the twinkling mischief in his eyes - she could barely look at it without feeling her heart break once more. 

Where are you, Ben? 

He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead. She would have felt it, and she'd screamed exactly that more than once in her husband's face. After news of the Academy's destruction, Leia refused to believe it had even happened, until Han lost his patience, coerced her onto the Falcon, and flew to Yavin to show her the wreckage. 

"Leia... it's time to accept he's gone." 

But she couldn't accept that, so she railed against him, her fists pounding against his chest as she clung to him like she had never clung to anyone before. 

Her husband, who never believed in the Force until he was tangled up with a farm boy and a princess, and suddenly they were married and parents to a beautiful force sensitive boy, both of them still recovering from the trauma of the war. Leia always knew Han struggled with Leia and Ben's force connection when their son was growing up. Fatherhood didn't come naturally to him – but then, neither did motherhood to her - and though anyone could see his visceral and powerful love for his son, Leia always suspected that Han was a little jealous of their force connection. Leia could sense Ben's moods. She knew when he was crying with hunger or if it was exhaustion; once, she near collapsed in the Senate, later realising it was the exact moment her son fell from a tree and broke his arm. And some of that was mother's intuition, she knew, just like she knew Han had his own fatherly instincts. She had never let him live down the time he rushed a year-old Ben to the medbay, convinced the baby had contracted some rare disease, when in fact it was nothing more than a common cold. It wasn't until later, teasing him and his over-protectiveness, that he whispered: 

"But you would've known. I don't have that, and that's okay, but I just... need him to be okay, Leia. We deserve that, after everything." 

It wasn't until the Jedi Academy was destroyed and Ben was missing, presumed dead, and they would argue and sob in each other's arms, that Han admitted he had always wished he could feel what Leia could. She was so certain that their son was alive, and Han was so certain that he was dead. 

"Leia, you saw it yourself. How could he have survived that?" 

"I don't know, but he's alive. I've never been surer of anything in my life." 

In the years that followed, when it became more likely that Luke and the other students were not going to resurface, there was crying and screaming and smashed plates and fury, similar but so different to their other fights. Because if one of them was right, then Ben was out there. But where? Was he hurt? Taken by some First Order faction to be tortured and ransomed? But if the other was right, they would never see their son again. 

And that was worse than anything they experienced during the war. 

There was a knock at the door, and she was dragged from her thoughts. 

"Come in," said Leia, snapping the box closed and placing it under the bed. 

It was Lieutenant Kaydel Connix, a recent recruit who was proving to be a real asset. "Sorry to bother you, General." 

"Oh, you merely interrupted the musings of an old woman," Leia smiled, but noticed the apprehension on the girl's face. "What is it, Lieutenant?" 

Kaydel cleared her throat. "It's your husband, General. He's requesting permission to land on base." 

If the girl noticed the way Leia flinched, she didn't let it show. "Oh? Did he say why?" 

"He says he has something you need. A droid." 

"A droid?" _What is he up to?_ "We have plenty of droids." 

"General Solo... well, he claims this particular droid is carrying a map to Luke Skywalker."

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you for reading. 
> 
> I've had this idea that Ben was a spy for the Resistance since I watched TFA, mostly because Leia Organa is one of my favourite characters of all time and she deserves some bloody happiness. 
> 
> After we got a glimpse of Ben Solo in TROS, I had to write it. 
> 
> I'm taking some liberties in assuming Ben would be able to block Snoke from certain parts of his mind. Honestly, if JJ Abrams can bring back Palpatine with no more explanation than 'Somehow...' then I can do this. 
> 
> There will be some plot elements taken from TFA but it won't be in chronological order. I'm also taking some plot points from the novels - mostly Bloodline. 
> 
> One last thing - Rey will be in this, but please don't expect a hardcore Rey/Ben romance. I do like their relationship in the films and I will probably incorporate it here, but I'm not the best at writing romance, and as I say in the tags, I see this more as a story about Ben, Leia, Han and Luke. But I love Rey and she will turn up eventually! 
> 
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
